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October 21, 2008

A LinkedIn Experiment

If you have read my blog, you will know that I am a huge fan of LinkedIn! In my opinion, it's the most powerful networking tool someone can have in their online networking toolkit. To prove my point, I have embarked upon a little experiment.

I have been a member of many LinkedIn groups since joining LinkedIn. One such open networking group is TopLinked. TopLinked has their own website in addition to their LinkedIn group where you can use their group member list to increase your LinkedIn network base. They offer several different options either the free service where you can join the group, promote the group by including them in your headline name, and then upload their top member list and export it to LinkedIn to send invites or you can also purchase a monthly or year membership where you have access to all TopLinked members information for a low monthly fee of $9.95 or $49.95 for a year.

Open networkers accept all LinkedIn invitations even if they do not know the requestor. This increases their network size which allows for better and more in depth searches. Better searches equal greater access to contacts and their contact's contacts.

So, at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, October 21, 2008, I logged onto TopLinked and downloaded their top member list, exported the file, and sent 134 invitations to other TopLinked open networkers. At that time I had 317 connections. To prove the power of this free service, I plan on providing daily updates on my blog as to the success of this experiment.